OK, I keep reading everyone debating on the high kicks issue. That is one thing most of us TKD people have in common. But what about stances? In both of the MA I have trained in, we use low stances. I have a prejudice against high stances because of this. I always look at two things when watching someone train/compete: stances and do they use their whole body (twist their shoulders). I think low stances develop great leg strength, are more stable, generate more power, and when watching new students practice self defence, the first thing they forget is their stance, so the training in low stances makes it more natural to use the stances when defending oneself.

I know WTF uses high stances for more mobility, right? Any other reasons?

It's a Friday night at two o'clock in the morning you have just been dancing all night in a club. You come out the club and realise you missed the last bus and you do not have enought money for a taxi, its a long walk home.

You start to walk home it's cold and to top it off it starts to rain, within minutes your jeans are soaked through.

stances-I assume you mean things like horse,front,etc.-are transitory.They are not meant to be held or stayed in.Yes, practicing forms in low stances does build muscle,endurance, etc.Fighting from low stances tends to limit mobility.Higher stances allow quicker movement.

as for stances..why would the old okinawan or korean masters (supposedly very effective fighters)...fight from a low horse stance front stance or cat stance......simple truth...they wouldnt and they didnt. then how might you use a low stance...stances to me are freeze frames of motion...concentrate on the movement into that stance not the stance itsself...when performing kotegaishi for instance...lower your weight into one of those "stances" this adds power. they can also be evasionary movements. they were not in my opinion stances to fight from, otherwise there would be no stance called the fighting stance! which is almost always a neutral stance, not too deep, and weight evenly distributed, its called the fighting stance because this is the stance you fight from...the others stem from it for various reasons some of which are mentioned above.it also has to do with your polarity...positive and negative energy of your body when striking your opponent...thats a whole other story.

Boxers seems to be able to generate a sufficent amount of power form a high stance. As kempo mentioned, so did the old Okinawan masters. Even the Japanese don't fight out of those deep stances, they lunge into it to gain distance and range.

I train in goju ryu Karate, and the kata "Taikyoku Gedan" can, and has, been performed in less than 8 seconds. 8 seconds to perform a kata that has 19 moves, all in shiko dachi (sumo stance, very close to horse stance only feet are on 45 degree angles instead of parallel facing forward).

I couldnt do that kata in that ammount of time even if I was allowed to do it in regular fighting stance.

The fact remains that the masters of old practiced transitionary stances to such an extenet that they became part of them. They could literally RUN in zenkutsi dachi (forward leaning stance) as fast as the avergae person can run normally.

Also, in those times it was devloped to fight the heavily armored Samurai, whom wore very thick and heavy bamboo armor, slowing their movement. This allowed for mroe time for each attack, because you also required a more powerful atack to break the armor.

Times have changed, and the combat usefulness of such stances is minimal (save for a few stances I might use in a grappling range for leverage and such, and other special situations).

There are other lessons to be learned from practicing stances as well, such as hip movement, power transfer, strengthening/flexibility, as well as balance and stamina...The very fundamentals (at least physically) of msot MA.

if they fought from these stances then why is there a "fighting" stance?????? i have to disagree with you...and kata is kata not fighting...i dont care how fast you can do a set of prearranged movements that proves nothing of how well they fought or if they fought from low stances or not....funny that you called them "transitional stances" that leads me to believe that i am correct and only drives home my point further in my mind.as for the armor of the samurai, i think they probably found the kinks in the armor...like the uncovered eyes..throat...armpits..knees, and other joints...etc. and also why they used the makiwara...not to only develope the punch itsself..but to harden the knuckles and hands.watch any high ranking karate, or taekwondo master...and i seriously doubt you will see them start from a cat stance or horse stance.......period.grandmaster fusei kise REFUSED to get into a low stance for a magazine article because it is not part of their style...research his lineage you will see it goes back long and distinguished to the founders of shorin ryu karate, and he was chosen to carry on the teachings.in uechi ryu the everything comes from sanchin..which just happens to be a neutral stancein tkd we were taught to fight from a neutral stance...the other stances (i dont think they should be called stances at all)...were as you so conveniently put it..."transitional" in nature. you might be in this or that stance for a split second...then return to your neutral stance...which is actually much more structurally stable than a horse stance or front stance as well because you are stable from all directions..not just one (plane)as in the other two...or even worse..standing pretty much on one foot in the case of the cat stance...why would you fight from these stances...especially against a heavily armored samurai........i wouldnt..and i seriously doubt they did either.george dillman has studied with some of the best including hohan soken....and he teaches karate the way i described it, so i respectfully disagree with you.

Well, if you did some research you would see that the old masters relaly did fight this way, whether you wish to believe me or not.

I agree that stances are transitional, and I believe in fighting froma neutral stance (which i do myself).

The reason for fighting stance is simple: people DONT fight in traditional stances anymore, therefore the training has been adapted to fit today's combat requirements for survival (i.e. less power, but more speed and mobility, whereas in the past it was the other way around).

If you dont believe me, read a few books on it, I have, thats where I learned this.

I suggest "Karate-do, my way of life" by the late Gichin Funakoshi (the founder of Shotokan karate).